If you are interested in the world from the perspective of a wise and intelligent investor, you'll love my good friend Hans Deuel's blog.
I try to read it every day. Great work and fun to read.
Joyce Appleby: Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination
Niall Ferguson: The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets, 1798-1848
Jonathan Israel: The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806
Jerry Z. Muller: The Mind and the Market : Capitalism in Modern European Thought